SDSU (7-2) at No. 3 TCU (10-0)

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San Diego State’s best football season since 1998 has been played against the seventh-weakest schedule so far in major college football, according to NCAA statistics.

Which raises a number of pertinent questions this week and next:

How much of the Aztecs’ success this year can be attributed to playing bad teams?

And how much has SDSU closed the gap between itself and the top two power programs in the Mountain West Conference?

SDSU (7-2) plays at No. 3 Texas Christian (10-0) on Saturday and hosts No. 15 Utah (8-1) next week. Both opponents are expected to be considerable upgrades from SDSU’s previous schedule, which ranks 114th out of 120 teams according to strength of its past opponents.

“I don’t put a lot of stock into that,” SDSU head coach Brady Hoke said. “Any given Saturday, anything can happen in football. If you’re not prepared and not in the right mindset and haven’t done the work it takes to get yourself ready, you can look really foolish either way.”

Oddsmakers expect SDSU to look somewhat foolish Saturday against TCU, a 26-point favorite. It’s a sign that while SDSU has dramatically improved its record from last year (4-8), the Aztecs still have to show they can do better than beating the likes of Nicholls State (2-7) and New Mexico (1-8) if they want to play for a Top 25 ranking and the MWC championship.

SDSU’s seven wins this year have come against teams with a combined record of 19-47. Even though SDSU’s win against then-23rd-ranked Air Force was its first against a Top 25 team in 14 years, the Aztecs haven’t had a landmark victory worthy of national attention since perhaps 1981, when they beat No. 12 Iowa State 52-31, or 1977, when they beat No. 13 Florida State 41-16. Saturday could change that.

“We’re better now than we were (earlier this season),” SDSU defensive coordinator Rocky Long said. “You wouldn’t want to play one of these teams the third week of the season. We’re better off now than we would have been earlier in the year. Whether we’re ready for that caliber of play, heck, that’s why you play. No one knows.”

A win over TCU could be SDSU’s biggest in school history. But history has proved to be a heavy weight, especially in the past 10 years.

Consider that SDSU won 38 combined games from 2000 to 2009. Of those 38 wins, only seven came against teams that finished with winning records, including three teams that play in the slower, smaller Football Championship Subdivision. From 2006 through 2009, SDSU did not beat a single team that finished with a winning record.

This year, SDSU has beaten only one team that could finish with a winning record: Air Force (6-4). The Aztecs came close against another top foe, losing at No. 17 Missouri 27-24, after a missed block-in-the-back call led to the Tigers’ last-minute, game-winning touchdown. SDSU’s other loss — 24-21 at BYU (now 4-5) — also was aided by another missed call.

“We’ve played big games this year with Missouri and BYU,” SDSU linebacker Miles Burris said. “Looking back at games like that and how you lost and how it feels, you want to go out there and play that much harder so you don’t feel like that again.”

The Aztecs don’t just want to avoid feeling like that again. They want to discover a feeling they’ve never had: beating a Top 10 team. Their top goal — winning the league title — depends on it.